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Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

wanna make a game, or anything else? seminal bloom!
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onpon4
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Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

Post by onpon4 »

I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for Hexoshi, the game I'm developing:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexoshi

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This is going to be my biggest game yet once completed. I'm hoping to capture the essence of everything that made Super Metroid great, and make something even better. The crowdfunding campaign is to fund the development of Milestone 1, which focuses on the first area of the game, graphical improvements, new enemies, and giving the player some new abilities.

Right now it looks very similar to Super Metroid because it's in such an early development state, but I'm hoping to expand and give Hexoshi its own identity as its development moves forward.

Of course, given my principles, the game is 100% libre. It is also publicly available, though there currently isn't a proper release, just the Git repository.

All comments are welcome. :)
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

Post by ParmaJon »

Neato, I'll keep following this as more comes out.
Go to bed

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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

Post by InsaneIntentions1 »

This is my favorite genre of games, so I'll definitely be following this
That crazy voice dude
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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Only a quarter of the way into the campaign, we've reached 50%! :D

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... es/update4
Yesterday, while I was at work, funding for this campaign passed the 50% mark! Of course, this is magnificent; in just one out of about four weeks, we are halfway through our target. If we keep this up, we might be able to fund both Milestone 1 and Milestone 2 at the same time!

Of course, it’s not over yet. Don’t forget to spread the word! Every post on blogs and social media helps. :)

Another great thing that has happened is translations; people have stepped forward and translated Hexoshi to Spanish and Portuguese. You can see these translations now by running the “build.py” script in “data/locale”, then running Hexoshi with the “-l es” or “-l pt” command-line option (or just having your system language set to one of these).
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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This is an incredible surprise, but the funding goal has been reached!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... es/update5
Only a day after this campaign reached 50% of its goal, our entire goal has now been reached! It was quite a surprise yesterday when, while on a break during a busy day at work, I noticed that someone had contributed roughly $500 since I had last checked it. But I was even more surprised when I got home: while I cannot identify for sure who it was, I can tell based on the list of backers that this was one person, and not only did this person donate $500, they donated $500 in $5 pledges, meaning they asked for nothing in return! That is incredibly generous and whoever it is, I can’t possibly thank you enough.

This of course means we now know for sure that Milestone 1 will move forward, but remember: extra funds can be put toward the goals of Milestone 2, and maybe even Milestone 3. So let’s keep pushing!
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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Update: Tile Improvements

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... es/update6
Over the last few days, I have been updating Hexoshi’s rooms to use some new edge tiles I made a few days ago. This improves something about the tiles that was minor, but really bothered me: the walls an ceilings looked unnaturally straight. Now, they look more jagged, as they ought to:

Image

Another graphical improvement that has been made, which cannot be shown in a simple screenshot, is to make the enemies fade out rather than just immediately disappear. This seems to work well despite its simplicity.
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... es/update7
Some people have suggested I outline some of the plans for future milestones. That isn’t quite possible because there currently aren’t any concrete plans past Milestone 1 (Milestone 2’s goals will be determined when it’s time to start working on it), but outlining some general ideas I have for what to do in the future is a good idea, so I have done so in the following page:

https://hexoshi.gitlab.io/ideas.html

Please feel free to let me know what you think about these ideas, and if you have any ideas of your own.
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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New update: Special characters

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... cial-chars
Over on Hexoshi’s GitLab page, I and a volunteer have been working on extending Hexoshi’s font to support accented characters. As of today, most of the major characters are now available for translations, although most of them just look like their nearest unaccented equivalents. This will be worked on in the coming days.

It’s technically possible to also add non-European languages to Hexoshi’s font. However, since each character has to be manually added in, it’s unlikely that full support will be feasible for many non-European languages. Still, if you are doing a translation for Hexoshi and need to use non-Latin characters, feel free to add them in and submit a pull request! :) I would also appreciate additional help putting the actual accents on accented Latin characters.
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... /busy-week
I unfortunately haven’t been able to do much this week with Hexoshi because of a busy week at work. This highlights why crowdfunding campaigns such as this are necessary, especially for large games such as this: we all have bills to pay, and that means that work that we’re paid to do must take priority over work that we are doing for free, such as the extra work on Hexoshi I have been doing for free until the campaign ends. At some point, when you depend on such unpaid work to get a project done, development stagnates and ends up taking years, if it ever gets completed at all.

But since Hexoshi’s development is being funded, we will not have this problem as we work on Milestone 1 in 2017. Thanks to this funding, we can guarantee that we will at least reach the goals of Milestone 1.

Of course, additional funding will guarantee more development past the goals of Milestone 1, so if you want to see that happen, please consider making a contribution to push us further over the edge! While I can’t make any precise calculations from this vantage point, I suspect that $2500 would probably be sufficient to blast us through both Milestone 1 and Milestone 2 in one fell swoop.

And happy holidays, everyone!
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... inish-line
As the year 2016 comes to a close, so does this campaign. I am glad that it has been a success and look forward to completing Milestone 1 in 2017. But it’s not over yet!

Since the last update, I have done some extra (unpaid) work on Hexoshi in my spare time. It’s not much, but it includes two new rooms (one of which is currently inaccessible), some code tweaks, and adding accents to more of the special characters in the font. One particular code tweak involved making it so that Anneroy can stand on slopes without sliding down them, which allows slopes to be used more liberally without causing problems for the player.

I am considering also making a video showing how one of Hexoshi’s rooms is made, for anyone who either is curious or wants to build their own Hexoshi world. Please let me know if you would be interested in this. Making a room for Hexoshi is somewhat complicated due to the nature of the game and the tool being used (Tiled), but not difficult once you understand how it works.

The next update will probably be an announcement of the first vote, which as I said will be on what Milestone 1 goals we should work on first. Stay tuned for that!
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... fun-begins
Boy, do we have quite an update today! Lots of stuff is going on.

As I said in the last update, I was considering making a video showing how a Hexoshi room is made. Someone on the Goblin Refuge showed support for the idea, so I went ahead and did it. It's rough and not at all meant to be a tutorial (just a demonstration), but it's here:

https://archive.org/details/HexoshiTiledDemonstration

To be clear, I did not count that toward the 20 hours of paid work I will be doing on Hexoshi. That counter will start once I actually receive the funds raised.

I have also received the list of contributors and the perks they chose, so those who chose the $30 pledge level are now listed in Hexoshi's credits as promised. This also means that the first vote can be announced. I will do that in a separate announcement to make sure it has maximum visibility.

Of course, because of how Crowd Supply works, you can still contribute to this campaign if you like. Don't be shy; after all, the more extra funds are raised here, the easier the next campaign will be. But now it's time for the best part: developing Hexoshi. This is where the real fun begins, and I hope you enjoy this process as much as I do.
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... ng-results
Voting Results

The first poll has concluded, and the results are in. Of the 25 eligible voters, 12 voted and 13 abstained. The results were as follows:

1. 5 votes (36%)
2. 1 vote (7%)
3. 8 votes (57%)

So the first task we will work on is: Add Anneroy’s new abilities. Thank you to everyone who voted!

Progress Report

I had Monday and Tuesday available this week, so I dedicated both days to Hexoshi’s development. I timed myself for 3 hours of work on Milestone 1’s goals, though I also spent several hours on some extra things which I did not time myself doing. The following developments occurred:

* 9 new rooms have been added, bringing the total number of rooms to 23.
* A message is now shown the first time you activate a warp pad explaining that you can press “up” to teleport (similar to the messages seen when powerups are collected).
* I made sloped versions of the stone tiles. they can be seen below the E-tank to the left of the Handheld Map.
* Support for “map hints” to change the way the map is generated has been added. These hints are used in some of the new rooms. Their intended purpose is to enable the creation of non-rectangular rooms.
* Lines of Code – a track which was previously rejected because of its loudness war syndrome – has been added back in for use in the credits screen, where this isn’t so much of a problem.
* Support and graphics for useless artifacts has been added. These can be used sparingly to add some purpose to corridors designed to take players in the wrong direction, and to otherwise add filler to the game. It can also be a handy way to put easter eggs into the game.

Other Notes

Someone contacted me and asked if there is a mailing list to discuss voting issues. Unfortunately, there currently is not. However, I do want voters to discuss these issues, especially more important ones like the next one, so from now on I will open an issue on Hexoshi’s GitLab page for discussing each poll. The corresponding issue will be linked to both in the nomination phase announcement and in the voting phase announcement.
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexo ... s/savannah
Hexoshi has been approved on Savannah! Because of this, further development will be done there. The project has been fully moved, and the GitLab project has been archived.

The new location for the website is found here:

http://hexoshi.nongnu.org

And the new project page is here:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/hexoshi/

To be clear, the new enemies issue will continue to be discussed on GitLab, while future issues will have either an associated task or an associated bug on the Savannah project page.

Savannah supports a lot of features that GitLab does not. In particular, I have started using the Task Manager to track our progress on the goals of Milestone 1, and I will be posting updates to the news feed in addition to Crowd Supply from now on; you can subscribe to the news feed here:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/news/atom.php?group=hexoshi

Other than the move to Savannah, the news is relatively modest. Luke has begun to work the ball form, and I have completed some more rooms and made some other enhancements to Hexoshi. The time I recorded myself working on Hexoshi since the last update was 1 hour and 30 minutes. This is inaccurate since I forgot to time myself a few times, but that's fine; I'll just say a wizard did it. So officially, the amount of time I've spent in total is 4 hours and 30 minutes. Changes since the last update include the following:

* Six more rooms were added, bringing the total number of rooms to 30.
* The E-tank to the left of the Handheld Map has been replaced with a useless artifact. I felt that it was too early to give a health upgrade there.
* The map disk near the second warp pad is now complete (i.e. the rooms it maps out now all exist).
* A "map" key has been added (assigned to "M" by default).
* Powerups are now removed from the map when collected. Because of the nature of the map, this cannot be retroactively applied to old save files; you will have to start a new game.
* The URL in the credits has been updated to "hexoshi.nongnu.org".
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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An important announcement has just been made. It can be found here:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum ... um_id=8830
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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That last one was an April Fool's joke. This one is real, and it's huge:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum ... um_id=8838
I must apologize for the late announcement of the voting results. I just
so happened to launch a Patreon page at the same time as the voting
ended, so I forgot to do so.

On that note, please consider contributing to that Patreon page, which
can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/onpon4

It will not have anything to do with Milestone 1 of Hexoshi, but it
supports my other game development efforts, and if I get enough funding
through it, I may be able to make the Milestone 2 crowdfunding campaign
entirely focused on raising money to commission art. That would make the
campaign smaller (and therefore more likely to succeed), and it would
also make the way Milestone 2 is developed much more flexible.

In any case, the voting results. I assigned a number of points to each
choice based on where people placed them among their preferences: first
choice got five points, second choice got four points, and so on, up
until the fifth choice, which got one point. The top three choices by
this metric were:

1. Iridia (17 points)
2. Aoshi (14 points)
3. Ulu (7 points)

The voter turnout was low (again), but that's OK. Iridia was one of my
favorite options too, so Iridia it is.

But that's not all; there have also been a *ton* of new developments
since the last progress report last month. These are the most notable
developments:

* Iridia is finished. A temporary ending, a macguffin, has been included in the last accessible room (which will lead to the second major area in Milestone 2).
* Fixed a defect in map scrolling that caused it to take almost a second with each interval (and it would have gotten even worse later on).
* Changed Anneroy's ball form to behave a lot more like a ball. This requires an update to xsge_physics, so do remember to update that to version 0.13 or later if you haven't already! Rolling down a slope as a ball now allows you to get a massive speed boost, while rolling up a hill requires a running - or, rather, rolling - start.
* Added a statistic for the number of enemy types killed. It's pretty meaningless right now, but later on, it will be another useful indicator of progress.
* Added an animation to show that decompressing failed when it does (due to being in a one-tile-high space).
* Added a "lax" to decompressing, so if you're close to a 1-tile-wide hole but not quite there, you shift over.
* Fixed a defect in wall jumping: you jumped a shorter or higher height in an inconsistent way based on when you released the jump button. Variable heights was not supposed to be possible, so it has been removed and the wall jump height has been reduced.
* It is now possible to compress while running; simply double-tap "down" as you would if you were in the air.
* Added a warning if you attempt to leave the game when there is unsaved progress.
* Added a "diagonal aim lock" option, which reverses the function of the "aim diagonal" button.
* Changed the way game data is saved so that it is more robust. Unfortunately, this was a significant enough change that old saves would crash the game, so any save files in the old format are automatically deleted.
* Added some map walls to room 5 and gave it some camera guides to better hide the hidden artifact found in it.
* Added the Hedgehog Hormone, which briefly causes spikes to grow out of Anneroy's ball form, damaging enemies and protecting Anneroy from damage by contact with enemies (but not protecting from bullets).
* Fixed a bug in map generation that caused some map objects to be drawn multiple times. The practical effect of this was to prevent artifact indicators from being erased.
* Added a sound (taken from Minetest) for when stones are broken.
* Pulled an updated Spanish translation from Jorge.
* Changed the credits screen to black instead of that purplish color.
* Changed the way stones generate fragment objects to limit how much this slows down the game. Basically, if the frame rate is low, the number of fragments generated is reduced to prevent it from getting any lower.
* The E-tank in room 10 has been changed so that it requires a ball jump ability combined with the hedgehog spikes to obtain. Previously I intended for it to be obtained with a wall climbing ability, but I have found the task of implementing wall climbing physics too complex to be worthwhile.
* Fixed a crash caused by attempting to pause the game with a game controller.
* Fixed a bug that allowed Anneroy to be in a "rolling" state while walking.
* Switched the spike stone image to make it more visually distinct.
* Added the Atomic Compressor sprite.
* Added links to my Patreon page and the Milestone 1 CrowdSupply campaign to the title screen.

Milestone 1 is on the horizon, but much more work needs to be done. Stay tuned!
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Re: Hexoshi - New Metroid-like game I'm developing

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https://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum ... um_id=8855
It probably looks on the outside like Hexoshi is dormant, and I must apologize for that. Regardless of appearances, I am actually busier than I have been in a long time, since I have recently started re-learning Japanese (successfully!) and also started an interesting new side-project called Tangomon. I haven't been working on Hexoshi much, but that's because most of the work that's left is graphical improvements, which not only has Luke been working diligently on, he's even done extra improvements for free! Those extras consist of a new warp pad, as well as a WIP full make-over of Iridia to give it a more defined identity.

As for actual tasks of Milestone one, the following new images have been finished:

* Hedgehog Hormone powerup
* Monkey Boots powerup
* Anneroy teleport animation
* Anneroy death animation

Other changes since the last update include:

* Replaced the "diagonal aim lock" option with a "Metroid-style aiming" option.
* Changed the map disk near the second warp pad to make it show the whole chamber leading to the Atomic Compressor.
* Made some layout changes so that it is easier to find the Handheld Map (or, rather, more difficult not to find it).
* Adjusted Anneroy's handling a bit.
* Added a "worm" enemy which, when Anneroy gets close to it, pops out of the ground and then pops back in. It is based on an animation on OpenGameArt.org that was pointed out to me. It doesn't quite match the style of Hexoshi, fixing that is now a task being assigned to Luke (as one of the enemies he works on).

By the way, as far as tasks go, I have opened tasks for the next two enemies that will be added to Hexoshi: the primary antagonists, the Mantanoids, and a dog-sized scorpion-like alien which is the mantanoids' equivalent to a dog. Both of these enemies will be recurring enemies, seen throughout the entire planet Anneroy is exploring at various strength levels. Luke is currently working on the scorpion enemy.

As always, thank you for your support and patience. Milestone 1 will be arriving a little later than I hoped, but it is on the horizon. If you want to continue to support my game development efforts after Milestone 1, or if you want to support my other libre game development efforts, please consider contributing to either my Patreon page or my Liberapay page:

https://www.patreon.com/onpon4
https://liberapay.com/onpon4
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